1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, a storage medium having an image processing program stored thereon, a game apparatus and a storage medium having a game program stored thereon. More specifically, the present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, a storage medium having an image processing program stored thereon, a game apparatus and a storage medium having a game program stored thereon for controlling a display state of an object displayed on a screen by operating a pointing device.
2. Description of the Background Art
According to one conventional technique for operating an object by directly touching an operation panel (tough input operation), the object is rotated in accordance with a direction in which a finger, a pen or the like is moved while kept in contact with the touch panel (drag operation) (for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publications Nos. 5-100809 and 9-134269). Specifically, when the drag operation is conducted rightward, the object is rotated clockwise; and when the drag operation is conducted leftward, the object is rotated counterclockwise.
The above-described technique, which rotates an object by a drag operation, requires coordinate values to be input in succession to some extent. For this reason, this technique has problems that the operation needs a large number of steps and thus is time-consuming, and therefore it is difficult to rotate an object with a simple and quick operation. The technique has another problem that since the object is rotated by a drag operation, it is difficult to separately perform the operation to rotate the object and the operation to move the object. Generally, an object is moved by a drag operation. When the above-described technique is used to move an object, the object is indispensably rotated as well as being moved by, for example, a drag operation.